Color Me Rad: Hit Lab NZ Brings Animation Home

You can be a kid at heart to still enjoy the augmented reality coming to coloring books.

We waxed (Crayola style) on our glimpse at Clayton Patterson‘s coloring book a few weeks back. Now we can wax off, switching gears into the augmented reality of a 3D coloring book powered by HIT Lab NZ, New Zealand’s human interface technology lab.

The reality of colored images jumping off the page is here, for Windows users—take that apple heads. HIT Lab NZ made it possible by bridging the tradition of coloring the printable 2D pages of the book, then using a program called colAR to give it the depth your peepers have been yearning for since mom stacked your artwork on the refrigerator. Back then, you’d probably have to compile a grip of pages into a flipbook for some homemade animation. Like those sheets of paper, their days are numbered.